#28 - The Questions Google Can’t Answer...But We Can

In this special Q&A episode of Over The Bull, Ken Carroll answers the internet’s most-asked questions about marketing — the ones real business owners are typing into Google every day. From “Does digital marketing really work?” to “How long does it take for Google Ads to pay off?”, Ken cuts through the jargon and hype with clear, experience-driven insights. You’ll hear honest takes on SEO, email marketing, content strategy, and web design — and why the real answers often go beyond what AI or quick-fix guides can tell you. If you’ve ever wondered what actually works in marketing, this episode is your no-fluff guide.

Transcript

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You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.

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Questions and answers on this episode of Over the Bull. Welcome back. I'm Ken and I'm your host, like it or not. So, anyway, diving in here this week, I wanted to uh share with you a story from last week's uh, you know, just working around the agency, and it really is not agency work because I was trying to help somebody out, uh a friend of mine out in the Midwest, and uh she got stuck trying to clean up a website that was built on a really cheap hosting platform uh using WordPress. So it's one of those buy cheap hosting, click a button, start WordPress. And the problem was this website was in such disarray that her changes and updates could not be salvaged. Uh so if you're having someone build you with WordPress or you're using WordPress, I want to let you know that there's a big difference. Just like if uh you know I have plumbing tools, I'm not a plumber, I'm not going to do things as well as uh another plumber. And I may create mold, I may, I may completely damage my house from what I'm doing. In like manner, when you're when you're building in something like WordPress, uh there are people who claim to be professionals who are really not. And they're going out and building these sites, using themes and just throwing together these sites and launching them. And unfortunately, businesses are buying these. Now, the reason they're buying them is because they think they're getting a deal, or the reason they're doing it themselves. They think they're they're kind of beating the system, so to speak. And in reality, remember that your website, if it's not doing something effective for your business and not just sitting out there drowning in a sea of other websites, then it's really ineffective and your money's wasted anyway. Um the other thing that uh I did run across this, this was interesting. I got through doing a proposal for a uh a new prospect, and her big question was, are you US based? And uh I thought that was a really good question because you really shouldn't develop if you don't live in the market. Like if you outsource to another country uh to try to get a deal, one thing that they've learned, I think, the hard way is that support, help, and making it relate to the people they're trying to market to simply doesn't work. Now, that company that built that site, they did some things that were pretty good. Even in the marketing, there were some things that were good, but there were some that was just incredibly uh off in that particular situation. So here's what I'm doing. Let's jump straight into these FAQs. And if it seems like I've had coffee today, well, I I've had coffee today, so buckle up. And so basically, what I'm doing here is uh jumping through different tools, and basically in those tools, you can punch in a topic, and then what it does is it kind of spits out the most common questions associated with those topics. So I thought it would be interesting to find out what the most common questions are that are asked in regards to different marketing questions, and then just try to answer them off the cuff. So literally before this session, I went through, I downloaded a series of questions, and I thought I would just give you my answers without doing a lot of homework and uh overly preparing. Let's see what happens. The first subject is digital marketing. So the first question, believe it or not, that's really popular is what is digital marketing and how does it work? You know, this is an interesting question because when you're in this business, you take for granted that people understand concepts like digital marketing, hosting, Google ads. You just think these are very basic things. Just like if you were in a foreign uh country speaking another language, to the natives there are certain words, it just seem obvious, but to someone stepping into the country, uh it's incredibly different. And so the idea of digital marketing, digital marketing is basically trying to promote something online, uh on the internet. And it works in the way that what you're trying to do is appeal to people that are most likely going to acquire your services. And then what you want to do is you want to build a value proposition based on your strategic advantages. And so, in order to do that, you've got to understand your strengths, your weaknesses, um, what we call a SWOT analysis, opportunities and threats are the other two. And then what you try to do is you you build the best possible presentation that you could build, and then you compete in that job market. Now, there are ways to market online that are more expensive, and there's some that are less expensive. Uh, but in essence, that's what you're trying to do. Now, from there, it explodes. There are all kinds of questions that you typically want to ask, like, you know, for example, if you have a limited budget, uh, which we all have a limited budget, it's just a matter of how limited is that budget. But if you have that limited budget, part of the question is is how do you strategically use that budget in a way that positions you to gain customers from it in the most effective ways? And uh there's always a learning curve. Absolutely, there is a learning curve with it. And so what you want to do is uh you need to work with somebody who understands it, but you need to be able to bring your expertise to the table. And if you're a startup, you're gonna need to lean more on data. Uh but things like competitive research, understanding your target audience, uh, making sure you're running the right kind of advertisements, making sure you understand what your objectives are, and then building that entire experience to generate sales or generate whatever you're trying to accomplish. Now, I think one of the most common things in digital marketing that happen with businesses, and I see it a lot, is where there is a focus on metrics that are not as important, but they're easier to achieve. So, for example, the word impressions. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talk about the number of views something had or the number of impressions something had. And basically those are vanity numbers. Now, they are an indicator, but you should never use impressions as like the ultimate goal when you're uh uh in business. It's it's a it's an indicator of of what's going on. But the the more important metrics are how it's directly meeting the goals that you set forth in your business, and then modifying that. And uh I guess the last thing I would say about digital marketing is it it doesn't, you never just get it figured out. So that's a myth that you somehow run ads, figure it out, and then stop it. It never stops. There's always the next step, and there's always the next thing, and there's a trend, and your competitors change, and so you have to change too. And if you don't change and develop, uh then you your business will slowly start to lose momentum. So uh digital marketing, it's uh really complex, and uh to encapsulate it. I guess the the strangest part about digital marketing is the big companies, like super big companies, uh, the biggest, that they they make you think that possibly you can run your own ad campaign. And uh freelancers, you know, they anyway, it gets so muddy because you wonder if you can run your own campaign and then you may hire someone and then they don't understand it. And there's just all these nuances that go into it. Uh anyway, so so I thought it's a little bit muddy, but there you go. It's uh right off the cuff. Um let's go on down. A lot of it's all about how does it work. By the way, this is an interesting side note. If you look at the questions that's asked when you look up something like web design, what you find a lot of times is that people are, you can tell that they're they're agencies or they're freelancers. Because the questions come up like how do you make money at web design? How do you find customers for web design? How do you, you know, it's like they are trying to sell web design, but they they're struggling to find people that'll buy their services. Now, granted, there is validity to the question because of course we want to know whatever is current out there, but a lot of this should really be an indicator that the world of web design is saturated with people who have bought into this idea that somehow they're going to replace their income building websites when they're really not solely dedicated to it. And, you know, in a way it's like more power to you, but in another way, it's like it's really hurting businesses who kind of get sold a bill of goods, or the people building their website doesn't really understand everything that goes into a website. So you could imagine that there's this push and pull, but at the end, I think it really does show us that this market is so saturated with people uh shortcutting it, fast tracking it, learning it, and then promoting themselves in a way that uh they really shouldn't be doing it. And and speaking of web design, I just caught this question. Uh this is again one of the most searched questions is what makes a good website design work? That's a weird question because you really don't start with a web design and then make it work. So the way I'm reading this is they have a good website and now they're trying to make it do what they want it to do. Well, this is the problem in itself. You never start with a web design and then back into making it work. That's the wrong method. If you've started with a web design and then you go into marketing after you've done that, a lot of times you've got to either rebuild it or you're going to suffer with really bad results. So the big thing to understand is you you don't go with that kind of question. The real question is, is how do I set goals so that my website will be effective? That that should be the real question. But this is indicative of the market that we live in today because people are still starting, and these do-it-yourself builders are horrible for this. They start with choosing a design and then they sell you on this design and they make you think that it is a good website design. Not true. What works in business? Well, makes something good in business when it contributes to the business. That's what you're trying to do. There are no extra points in good form and web design if it doesn't accomplish goals. So kind of uh going back to uh the digital marketing lens, it's the same thing. Goals are the first step. If you're not being asked what goals you're trying to accomplish and everything go toward reaching those goals, then you don't have a good website. So that's my tough answer to that one. Um here's an interesting one. How long does it take for a website design to work? How long does it take for a website design to work? I guess what they think is that this used to be an old myth where people used to think that if they build a website, then somehow it's going to pop up on the top of Google or something like that all by itself. Um those days are long, long gone. I I don't even think those days ever really existed. It's just a myth and it's it's really an idea that's kind of, I think, propagated not overtly, but it's implied through a lot of companies that want to sell web design. And so it doesn't. Okay, unless you put marketing legs to it, unless you put real effort into it and a contribution over a period of time, it will not work by itself. So the analogy that I've always used is just imagine that you have a boat, it has no cell and no motor, and it's sitting out in the middle of the ocean, but it's a really nice boat. Now, would you buy that boat knowing that it's sitting somewhere in the ocean with no sail, no motor, but it's a really beautiful boat and it really does exist? Probably not. Well, a website's kind of the same thing. Uh, if you don't apply marketing and you don't set goals when you first start it, it could be absolutely the most beautiful thing in the world, but no one's ever going to see that website. So you really want to be be careful about this. And this really circles back around uh one of the most frustrating things about this business. Uh when I say that, I mean the marketing and design uh you know uh agency is when you see these systems pop up, and you know, you know that you know that they're building it because they want to make money selling web designs and they don't really care about the businesses they sell them to. And so they sell this shiny object that does absolutely nothing. And as you can see, when you look at a question like how long does it take for a website design to work? you can see the confusion. And man, my heart goes out to businesses because I know what goes into trying to make a business work. And this just shows that you know people are confused and businesses are lost when it comes to it. Uh check out number seven. Does custom website design really make a difference? Man, that that's a great question. Does custom website design really make a difference? Um if it's under the right circumstances, the answer is yes. It absolutely makes all the difference. Uh if you're building a custom website to build a custom website, the answer is no. If you make it to where you start with the goals and the planning initially, and then that custom website meets the expectation of those goals and is designed in a way that speaks to your target audience, then it can make every bit of difference. It certainly will help not to use clip art and stock photos and all that stuff. People detect all that. I mean, there's a place for uh stock imagery and things like that, but uh really if you if you overlace it, it doesn't work. Now that's digressing a little bit, but so the answer is yes and no. Some people sell custom web designs just to sell a custom web design. Um but uh all in all, if you don't start with the goals and you don't start with the planning and you don't start with the understanding phase, then uh no, it's it's no different than anything else. It could be an absolutely lousy website that doesn't do the job, or it could be an incredible website that does. Now, unfortunately, that doesn't work the opposite. You know, when you talk about using uh like WordPress themes and things like that, check out the last episode. But canned themes and canned whatever, the the world of the web is so complicated and it's so competitive right now, that for someone to think that they can somehow just pop in standard stuff and have all the problems associated with uh even trying to use those systems and think they're going to be effective, it's really not the way it is. I mean, if you own a business, unless you want to get into the web business and the marketing business, like seriously get into it, you need someone to help you out. And you need someone who's competent. You need someone who has certifications and experience and all that. I mean, at Integris, I I just got through, I'll give you an idea, I just got through taking some tests at Google and legitimately going through all their material uh to get updated like Google Ads information. And one of them took three and a half, four hours for me to go through just to kind of get caught up on the modern trends and everything with it. And then I took a test to validate that I had had learned what I learned. And uh so so the idea is that this industry is extremely complicated. Uh, but there the problem is you can do a really kind of slop, sloppy, haphazard job at web design or Google Ads or anything, and it could be completely ineffective. And so uh I really uh understand your plight as a business owner and trying to find the right people to help you out to where it's going to work. There's some other questions here, and um how does Canva website design work? I have no idea how Canva website design works. I I have my philosophy on that. And um and so I we're as as our agency that when I look at like how that program works, uh, it would probably fall into the same bucket as how I feel about other solutions like that. Um let's talk about Google Ads. Here's something. And believe it or not, okay, so seriously, I what I did was I took the top questions that are asked, and then I ran an export and then I run them through uh basically Chad GPT in this case and just asked it, really give me the top questions with Google Ads. So let me read you the top five questions. Uh, how does Google Ads work? The second one is how do Google Ads work? So it's does and do, how Google Ads work, question mark. You get the point. It's like people want to know how Google ads work. Um and then number six is do Google Ads work for small business? So what I want to do is kind of address both of these a little bit. So let's let's talk about Google Ads. So uh Google Ads is not as simple as putting in what you think are like search terms and then building ads to those search terms. Now, on a very rudimentary level, that's exactly what a lot of people do, which is not correct. At least not complete. I'm not gonna say incorrect. But typically what you want to do is in Google you have something called a conversion. So a conversion is basically a meaningful action that you want to track. So for example, uh have someone make a phone call. That's a meaningful action. Uh have someone fill out a form, meaningful action, book an event, a meaningful action. And so what you do is you set these up as conversions. Now, when you set those up as conversions, and then you start running ads with those conversions as your goal. As you run those ads, what you do is you're starting to work with Google's machine learning to meet those objectives. And so the system will learn, and then you massage that information based on what happens. Now, when you look at Google Ads, it's not just uh search terms and and uh you know, you a lot of people think, well, what keywords do I plug in and things? All valuable. But the idea is that Google is much more complicated and it has a lot of different campaign types. Like, for example, it's got a traditional search campaign, which is kind of what I'm describing, but it also has things like display campaigns, performance max campaigns. It's even got some really oversimplified systems like uh uh smart campaigns, which which in my opinion I wouldn't I wouldn't personally use those. Um but then what you do is you you set up those campaigns and sometimes they handshake and they work together. Now, what's really fun about Google Ads is you can also uh limit your the people that see the ads to certain groups, like audiences. So if you have a certain uh people that are looking for certain things or they have certain attributes, you can also limit the ads to be seen to that group. And part of the whole thing is weed eating the ads, so to speak, where you eliminate the traffic that doesn't help you, you clean up the traffic that does help you, you understand what happens when people are visiting your website, and then what you do is you keep making uh adjustments over a period of time. And you see that just running ad campaigns is not good. Well, let me throw this at you too. So we also track phone numbers. And so we use different tools to use those where we can actually see where the calls are coming in and actually optimize for phone calls as well versus just publishing the standard phone number on a website and not track it. Because when you do that, you can understand a whole subset of information. So Google Ads is is effective. I mean, it it's it is incredibly effective, but it does require patience. It's not instant. Um you don't turn on ads one day and then get results the next. I mean, we've had those home runs, but as a business owner, you should never expect that. You know, it's kind of like um when I had a friend go to uh uh uh what is it? Paris Silent. And when he went, he expected the worst, and it wasn't as bad as he had thought. Like he had it like just pictured in his head as being this just disaster he's gonna have to go through. And by by getting his mind there and getting prepared, he made it through easy. Uh conversely, we had someone who I knew someone who went to Paris Island and he thought the opposite. He thought he was in great shape and he was gonna breeze through it, and he washed out. So kind of the same thing here. But uh Google Ads is interesting. Oh, and it number seven, let's look at this. How long does it take for Google Ads to work? It varies. I mean, if you think about Google Ads, it's like this. The recipe is simple, but at the same time, it's so nuanced. Like, okay, here it is. First of all, you got to bring the the right people have to see your advertisement. That means you've got to properly set up who sees those ads to begin with. And with each campaign type, there's a there's a subset of ways that you can do that. Okay, so that's number one. Number two is the actual ad content. What do you put on that ad that will encourage people or offset you from the competition where people may click on that ad. Then the next step is once they click on the ad and then they go to your website, is your website set up in a way that is friendly and meets the expectation of what the ad is claiming? Now, once all that's done and you set everything up, those three big buckets, I think it was three, those three big buckets, what they do is uh they work together and harmonize. Well, if you could imagine, what if you're sending the wrong people to your website? Um what if the ad is setting the wrong expectation? What if your landing page on your website doesn't meet what the ad is promoting? And you may think, well, you know, come on. Uh, you know, if I'm selling uh electrical, you know, I'm an electrician and people are looking for an electrician, and then my ad says, need an electrician, and it goes to an electrician page, well, what else needs to be said? And see, this is where things get kind of uh where it gets nuanced because what makes your, what makes you different from other electricians? And what do you need to do to make yourself stand out? And it's not about price always. Sometimes it's about maybe the security of uh, you know, could they trust you in their home if you're if you're working with an older demographic or even a younger demographic? I mean, the world's gotten a little bit crazy. And so the idea is you've got to think through all those nuanced things, and then you have to figure it out. So there's a little bit of detective work that goes into it. And then once you figure pieces out, you run it. And the thing is, is you don't run it for a day, make a change, run it for a day and make a change. Um, what you do is you set it up to the best of your ability, try to try to do everything right that you know to do, and then you've got the pain of having to wait and watch for results. And then after a period of time where enough results come in, you evaluate and then you make changes. Then you wait again. And the thing is, is even those changes should not be dramatic changes. They, you know, you don't want to do everything at once. Um I usually equate this to like uh back in the day, uh, you know, my dad was in the NASCAR and I'd watch it with him. And part of what they would do is they would, when a car came in uh to pit, one thing that they would do is they would make a minor adjustment and then they send the car back out. Well, when they send the car back out and then it starts, you know, then they see what happens, and then they bring it in, and they may, you know, reduce tire pressure or or do certain things to make the car hopefully run better so that by the end of the race they can make a strong run to win the race. And so uh those fine-tuning processes apply definitely to Google Ads. And unfortunately, you can imagine that if you get it set up and you make changes, that you can imagine that that could be four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, twelve weeks. Uh three or four episodes ago, I shared a story where uh we have a client, uh Ryan, I threw a shout-out. And uh Ryan, he uh stuck with it. And it took some time to get results, but once he did, it started working, and it was a little offbeat from people who were doing it another way in his field. Uh that's to his credit. He stuck, you know, he stood in there. You know, he uh he's willing to wait it out and let us make minor changes and minor adjustments and keep fine-tuning it until it worked. So when you say how long does it take for it to work, that's really kind of uh it's almost like they're asking, well, like if I spin it up, like when's the magic going to happen? Uh it's not magic, it's it's work. It's literally trying to build an ATM machine and you know have all pieces laid out and then trying to put it together and uh assuming that you can just you know use some super glue or whatever, but uh it's definitely not that way. Um let's move over here. This is um a subject called content marketing. So let me look at some of these questions here. Um so how does SEO and content marketing work together? They do work together. Uh content marketing is man. So content marketing is marketing content, meaning creating stuff that people will search for, they look at. Um there's also the idea of now the idea of conversational language is really coming to the forefront because with uh artificial intelligence like Chat GPT and things like that, what you're finding is that conversational. And FAQs and answering questions with real human content, not AI writing you a blog article. What you're finding is that that's becoming instrumental in things like Gemini and those other AI systems from referring to your content to help you gain visibility and getting in front of the customers you want to get in front of. And so content marketing is really complex. People think that, you know, I just create a blog article based on the flavor of the ice cream of the week. And that's not how it works these days. I mean, there are tools out there that it'll vary from topic to topic on how long the article should be, uh, what words should go in the article, how much those words should go in the article, how many headlines should be in the article, all the way down. And so uh content marketing is is not as easy as people think that it is to be effective. Um, freelancers and and some people, what they'll do is they'll create articles and they'll use AI and publish them just to show that they're doing work, but it's busy work, it's not real work. And uh so there's a real science behind content marketing. And the idea is the more content that you have that's really uh human-touched, human-curated content, and it's actually topics people look for on the internet, and it's structured the right way, then what you do is you it's like just having another door in your house that people can come into. Now, that content supports the larger SEO effort, which uh comprises a huge amount of variables. Some of them are fine-tuning the website, some of them are building your reputation using other locations on the internet, and then pooling all that together to build your credibility online in order to help you gain more visibility. Uh, basically, from a five-mile view, just think of it as Google and these search engines and artificial intelligence, they want to pull up the most effective, correct answers that are the most relevant to what someone's looking for on the web because that's what they sell. And if you try to cheat the system, then what you know, that doesn't make search engines happy because you're coming up and you're kind of showing up in the worst places, or you're not the most credible resource, and you've kind of tried to game the system to do it. And that's why they adjust their algorithms, because every time somebody finds a way to cheat, they make an adjustment. Just like right now. You're seeing like uh YouTube, uh, I believe they devalued a lot of AI content because it was really messing up uh the value of their platform. And so that that's part of what you you kind of want to think through a little bit is yeah, the both those things do go hand in hand together. They do work well together. And if you're in a uh a field that's an expertise, by the way, if you own any business, you're an expert in your business. So when I say that it's virtually any business, you should have a solution where content is kind of outlined and created, but then it's given to you to kind of modify it and then give that back and then publish that content to make sure that it's using the best that AI offers, but also uses the best that humans offer. And there is that hybrid, and the hybrid does exist. Um keep in mind that if all that's on the web is AI content, then the value of the internet is negligible because people, you know, I forget the term. There's something called like zombie, is a the website was they were calling it a zombie or something, something like that, because of the amount of like bot traffic versus real human traffic versus whatever. But you can imagine if if the internet's going to become this world of just AI junk content that's kind of just generic and top level, uh, you're gonna see that the Internet becomes less valuable. Well, what do search engines like Google do when they see that? I mean, that's their bread and butter. They have to clean that thing up. And so you can imagine the value of human curated uh content versus just uh spitballing it. So at a five-mile view, that that's kind of like the way I see it. Uh does content marketing really pay off? This is another question. Yeah, if it's done right, it does. If it's done wrong, no, it doesn't. Um, if you uh but again, you know, there's a price to pay. How long does it take for you to ask uh AI to create you an article on a subject that you've not researched? You know, how much does it take to properly research topics, build a proper outline, create the right tone, uh share it out, then the client edits it and then get it back and then put it on a web page in a way that's uh good for uh search engines and uh large language models. You can imagine one's gonna take you five minutes, one's gonna take you hours of work, uh, one's gonna be more effective than the other. If you want an agency, you could imagine it's pretty tempting to build the five-minute version and sell it as a two-hour version versus doing the two-hour version. So, this is what I see from the inside. So let's move down the line here. So, search engine optimization. This is gonna be probably a tough one to try to answer some questions, but let's give it a shot. Um, let's just grab the top one here. How does search engine optimization work? Search engine optimization work. So basically, what you do is you're you're building, if you five-mile view it, what you're doing is building credibility for a website in a way that works with search engines like Google to give a proper representation of a business to where they can properly rank that business so that it shows up in searches that's most effective for that business and adding value to Google. That's a mouthful, but that's basically what it is. You're building the credibility of a business. Well, search engine optimization is not, is trying to game the system to artificially come up on the top of uh search engines. And there's all kinds of techniques. If you go back through past episodes, you're going to see all kinds of things. Um do a little bit of homework on private blog networks, and you'll find out that uh Google frowns upon these things, but uh it's done behind the scenes. Businesses don't even know that SEO firms use this technique. Uh that could mean real trouble. Uh I did a press release early this year on it. Um so what is the number two, what is the work of search engine optimization? What is the what do they mean by that? What is the work? I guess what they mean what goes into it, I guess is what they're saying. Um two big buckets, if that's what's being asked. Uh there's on-site optimization and off-site optimization. Pretty self-explanatory. On-site means you're working on the site. Off-site means you're building your reputation within the greater community of the internet. And so there's different things that go into it, and there are a ton of factors. And typically what you do is you try to look at what the competition is doing, and I forget who it was. There was a real popular SEO guy, may still be around, but I think he said your goal is not to have a perfect website, but just be better than your competition. And so that's kind of uh what you try to do here. And you do that by using a lot of advanced tools to find out what the competition is doing, and then you just kind of mimic that process over time. Um let's see if there's any other. Oh, here's a good one. Does SEO really work? Oh, and then let's couple that with number seven. How long does SEO take to work? So this is really good. So the short answer is does SEO really work? Yes, and believe it or not, it's making a huge comeback with uh artificial intelligence. Uh if you want to not risk going dark as the new versions of Gemini and uh Chat and GPT eclipsing traditional search engines and things like that, yeah, uh it does work if it's done correctly and consistently, and the business is patient. I mean, this is a long time effort that you put into this. It's not something that happens overnight. Matter of fact, it's really bad to try to do it overnight. Uh how long does it take depends on um where you're trying to uh gain positioning and the competition and a lot of other factors. Uh sometimes we've seen uh jumps as early as three months, sometimes two years. Um it just shows that are you willing to stay in the game? And SEO work is not cheap. I mean, it's it's really not. We uh we do that, and a lot of times we don't even recommend it to certain clients because it's not something that um is overnight and it's something people can grow tired of. And if they see that invoice coming in and out of a month and they don't really understand what's going on, uh, or worse yet, they're being taken advantage of and there's nothing going on, um, you know, then a lot of money can be wasted uh for nothing. And so um the uh the short answer is is and you know what the realistic answer is to that? It could be, first of all, defining what work means. Uh because to me, work is advancement in gaining visibility. Uh but to some people work may be, you know, when am I going to be on you know number one on Google for a search result? Uh which of course is um, you know, a crazy gold ass with the way everything works in the uh world of SEO today. So um in essence, those are those questions. All right, so I've been babbling here for about 41 minutes, but uh kind of having fun with this. I don't know how you guys are feeling. Um check this out. Let's move over to email marketing. Does email marketing work? Okay, so first of all, let's let's get real about what happens on the internet. You know, one of the staggering statistics that Google Ads people who sell services never tell you is the average conversion rate across industry, meaning people making meaningful actions when they go to your website. Across all industry, I looked it up earlier today. That number is sitting somewhere between 3 and 5 percent. So just think 3 to 5% are going to actually engage in your business in a meaningful way. So you can imagine the investment. Well, what if there was a way to capture a larger portion of that market that may pop on your website, look around, and then go look at competitors and see what they're doing. So, by the way, we we do much better than that percentage most of the time. Um But when you uh when you look at it, the first thing is you think of is if someone's going to your website, you know, when you look at a meaningful action, like really engaging with your company, look at it kind of like a marriage proposal. You know, yeah, somebody, somebody may jump in, jump in and you know, hop right in, let's go to Vegas, and that's probably what that number is, is somewhere in there. People need it, they see it, they like it, they buy it. That's great. That's what we want. But in a lot of cases, they're doing their homework. They're doing what I like to call uh, I think it's popular, I don't think it's me that came up with this, but it's like uh the whole uh what used to be the sales cycle is now a marketing ecosystem where people are looking, they're asking questions, they go back, they look. And so you can imagine if you're one step on the journey and they're they're in that mode, you know, you've lost that person because they're probably not going to remember to come back to you. And so the idea with email marketing in part is to give people a lower value proposition. So in the marriage analogy, email marketing is kind of like going, you know, would you like to go out for a cup of coffee? The commitment level is much, much less. But it doesn't mean you can get away with something sloppy like sign up for our newsletter. I mean, that's like saying, Do you want to eat some gruel for dinner tonight? Um what you want to do is you want to make a real value proposition to where people would be inclined to say, yeah, you know, I'll share my email for that. Uh, because people are protective of their email addresses. Uh no one likes to get spammed. I mean, I I don't I can't tell you how many of these spammy emails I get. I'm sure you know I'm talking about, ranging from everything to getting a small business uh loan to we can grow your business, whatever. You know, they these things are ridiculous and uh you should never answer them. I've said it a million times. Don't answer the spammy emails. You're causing problems when you do because you make the bad guys think that their marketing works. Um but anyway, getting back to it. Uh what that does is if you if you can build a good value proposition, you collect those email addresses and then you can reach back out to that group. And so if you could capture a small percentage of the people that are leaving your site that you've already paid to have them come to your site, and you can convert them either short-term or long term into customers, then you're you're you're making the best. It's kind of like you're you're eating dinner, but you're putting uh the leftovers in the fridge and Tupperware to eat the next day. It's kind of the same thing. What you're trying to do is you're trying to optimize your marketing. And email marketing is really not something that requires a huge investment, but it is something that is a profession. And if you're serious about it, you need to really think through it. Everything from uh where it goes on your website to the offer you're making to fulfilling what you're promising you're going to do, the timeline at which you send things out. There's just a ton of factors that go into it. And so email marketing does work. Um, but it works in the right situations, and it works when it's in conjunction with everything else you're doing. So, you know, my best analogy I have with digital marketing, email marketing, website design, Google Ads is just think of one of these old watches, you know, with all these little cogs and gears. If all of them are going in the right sequence and all of them are working right, you got a working watch. If there's one or two gears out, odds are it's not going to keep good time. And it's the exact same thing when you do this. If the plan is not comprehensive and cohesive, it won't work. This is why our agency has moved into doing like more boutique style work where we're trying to encompass every need of our client, because if you have one person doing uh photography and videography, and you have another person building a website, another person working on SEO, another person, you know, get the point, uh, it becomes disjointed and the philosophy changes. And each one of those people, they may have a core expertise in one thing, but they they don't get the big picture. And so that's why things break, and that's why we believe that one solution, one plan, one set of goals, and then use all these things as tools. And that's how everything works. Okay, so I think I'm pretty much done with these questions. The rest of them are just kind of redundant, and a lot of them honestly are it looks like they're marketing people trying to figure it out. I mean, is is what it looks like, which should be a warning sign to you as the owner of a business that if they're asking questions, then they certainly don't know how to do it for you. Um and so uh the main ingredient at the end of the day, I would say, is you require expertise, participation, patience, and funding it like it's a business and not a hobby. Um and then make sure you, gosh, get the right people. Uh with that being said, I think I'm going to close up for this week of Over the Bull. I do appreciate you tuning in, uh listening, and I hope these questions help you out, at least give you some uh guideline and direction as you move forward in your business adventure. As always, we wish you the absolute best in your endeavors. And until next time, thank you for listening to Over the Bull.

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